It’s so nice when all the hard work pays off. After more than a year of planning, a trip to the border, many meetings with the composer, countless hours of quintet rehearsal, Voces del Desierto/Voices of the Desert was premiered on March 16 to a full house at MACLA. With 3 sold-out houses and standing ovations we knew something special had been created.

Guillermo Galindo’s composition brought together so many diverse elements–dirty, broken everyday objects left behind and found again, to the quintet’s modern instruments, as well as contemporary electronic equipment. One thing came through though–the piece’s intended voice, that of real people who struggle to cross a border for a better life–spoke to the audiences at MACLA. During the discussion with the audience after each performance there were many questions about the instruments, the composition process, and the logistics. But there was also real emotion. People had a heart-felt reaction to the piece.

What a gift for the five musicians of Quinteto Latino: to connect with people through music. This is why we play music. Gracias, Guillermo, for helping us speak to the audience with Voces del Desierto/Voices of the Desert.

Quinteto Latino and Trinity Chamber Concerts present:

Flute Masterclass

Claudio Barile
Principal Flute and Soloist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic

Saturday, April 21, 2012

10am – 5pm (with lunch break)

Trinity Chapel
2320 Dana Street
Berkeley, CA

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The class will be focused on standard flute repertoire as well as orchestra excerpts. As the founder of the award-winning Buenos Aires Philharmonic Quintet, Mr. Barile will also be happy to include woodwind quintets in the class!

Prices:

Participants: $85  (this includes a rehearsal with the class accompanist prior to the class)

Woodwind quintet: $100 (per quintet)

Auditors: $25

If you wish to perform for Mr. Barile as a class participant, please contact Quinteto Latino’s Diane Grubbe by email or phone at 415-794-2575).

More information

About Mr. Barile:

Born in Buenos Aires, Claudio Barile has developed a long and successful career in South America, Europe and the United States as a major exponent of the Argentinian artistic musical tradition. As Principal Flute and Soloist of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic since 1984, and a member of the Orchestra since 1974, Mr. Barile has been featured often performing the major solo flute repertoire at the famous Teatro Colon.

Mr. Barile has also held orchestral positions with the Buenos Aires Musical Ensemble, Mexico’s Orchestra of the Americas, The National Symphony of Argentina, and the Berlin Philharmonic, where he participated in the recording of the Brahms Serenata 1, Op. 11, in D Major, conducted by Claudio Abbado.

His international solo performances as a member of Camerata Bariloche have included concerts in Europe and the U.S., including an historic performance during the 100th anniversary celebration of New York’s Carnegie Hall. Mr. Barile’s recording of Alberto Ginastera’s Impressiones de la Puna with Camerata Bariloche is on the Dorian Label. Other solo appearances have been with the Prague-Collegium Orchestra and the Buenos Aires Bach Festival Orchestra.

An active chamber musician, Mr. Barile performs with the Baroque Ensemble, Quadro Barocco (performing ancient period-instrument repertoire), and is a founding member of the award-winning Buenos Aires Philharmonic Quintet. The ensemble was awarded the prestigious Konex Award for Chamber Music in 2009.

As three-time recipient of the Konex Award, Mr. Barile also received the Platinum Award for Wind Instruments in 2009 and the Konex Award for Wind Instruments in 1999, both for his solo accomplishments.

Voces del Desierto is a performance that honors the unnamed immigrant who crosses the US Mexico border in search of a better life. This performance utilizes video, traditional wind instruments, and hand-made instruments created from immigrants’ personal belongings found at the border.

“…The resulting work blended the utility, craftsmanship, and style of a traditional musical instrument with the purpose, design, and aesthetic of a fine arts piece….”

Read more about the Voces project in the San Francisco Classical Voice

See our Press section for more great articles!

Quinteto Latino blends the vibrant colors and vigorous rhythms of Latin American music with the sumptuous voices of the wind quintet: flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon. Whether exploring new twists on traditional folk songs or premiering works by living composers, these five musicians perform with impeccable artistry and infectious energy – educating, enriching, and entertaining listeners of all ages and backgrounds. Founded in 2001 by French hornist Armando Castellano, this unique ensemble is passionately dedicated to a dual mission: to expand the cultural boundaries of classical music, and to make that music available, relevant, and inspiring to entirely new audiences.

Sound Clips

Our new sound clips from our new CD being released now!

Danza de mediodia by Arturo Marquez

http://quintetolatino.org/audio/01Danzademediodia.mp3

Cinco danza breves – Movement III by Mario Lavista

http://quintetolatino.org/audio/09LavistaIII.mp3

Son de la bruja – Arranged by José Luis Hurtado

http://quintetolatino.org/audio/12SondelaBruja.mp3

Soli No. 2 by Carlos Chavez Movement II

http://quintetolatino.org/audio/Chavez_mvt2.mp3

Born in Mexico City 1960

Guillermo Galindo

Guillermo Galindo’s composition work constantly blurs the conventional limits that define music and the art of music composition itself.

Galindo’s wide approach to concepts such as musical form, time perception, music notation, sonic archetypes and instrumentation span through a wide spectrum of artistic works performed and shown at major festivals, concert halls and art exhibits throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.

From symphonic composition to the domains of musical and visual computer interaction, electro-acoustic music, opera, film, instrument building, three dimensional installation, live performance, improvisation and sound design, Galindo’s work has always remained in constant flux.

His orchestral composition includes two symphonies Ome Acatl premiered in Mexico City by the OFUNAM orchestra (1997) and Trade Routes (2006) commissioned and premiered by the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra and chorus. His operas include two major works: Califas 2000 with text and performance by MacArthur Fellow Guillermo Gomez Peña and Decreation/Fight Cherries f with text by MacArthur Fellow poet Anne Carson.

For many years a member and composer of Guillermo Gomez Peña’s Pocha Nostra, a bay area based international performance art troupe, and a resident composer for the Unbound Spirit AADP Dance Company (1992 to 2004), Galindo has developed his own brand of time based performance/ composition incorporating non Western ritual practices and real time application of musical form and narrative using sonic archetypes, architectural resonance and live audience interaction.

Galindo’s chamber and solo electro-acoustic works includes : TX3 (2008) (for cello and recorded tiger sounds) and Haiku II (2003) (for flute and recorded natural ambience) with text by Michael McClure which opened the first series of Latin American experimental music in the US at the The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Red Cat Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles California

Based on musical practices of indigenous American civilizations Galindo conceives and builds what he calls cyber-totemic sonic objects. Thus focusing on the relationship of sound and meaning occurring between physical objects and the sound they produce. His sonic object MAIZ is first used in the piece Post Colonial Dicontinuum (2006) for chamber and commissioned by the Earplay Ensemble premiered at the Herbst Theater during the inauguration activities of the new DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California.
An article published by Galindo himself in Leonardo Music Journal 17 (2007) explains the theory behind the fabrication of this first cyber-totemic sonic object.

Galindo’s wind quintet Voces del Desierto commissioned by Quinteto Latino takes the idea of his cyber-totemic sonic objects a step higher as he writes a piece including instruments made out of personal objects abandoned by the migrants at the U.S./ Mexico border.

Galindo’s work on modification of physical sonic environments, audience interactivity, three dimensional installation, sound spatialization and acousmatics includes; Transmission Series, a series of 9 pieces focused on the transmission of culture through the information media of sound and radio in collaboration with composer Chris Brown; Glance, an interactive sound and video installation in collaboration with Gustavo Vazquez commissioned by the ISEA/Zero One international science and art festival; DIVOX a multi channel audio piece installation written for the Oasis Sonoro project which included twelve 2 hour pieces to be played 24/7 at the Bellas Artes concert hall esplanade in Mexico City and various new pieces that manipulate the resonant qualities of specific architectural spaces.

Guillermo Galindo presently is a senior adjunct professor at the California College of Arts where he teaches courses on sound art, electronic music, applied composition, action art and musicology. He has worked as a panelist and tutor for the Jovenes Creadores music composition grant in Mexico and is a co-founder and co-curator of the radical POW! action art festival in San Francisco, California.

Some awards granted to Guillermo Galindo include: Center for Cultural Innovation Grant (2011), Gerbodeand Hewlet Foundation Composer Commission Grant in collaboration with Quinteto Latino (2011). City of Oakland Cultural Grants 08, ISEA Zero/One GLANCE installation commission, 2006, Meet the Composer Earplay Ensemble commissioning grant 2005, Sistema Nacional de Creadores Composition Grant, Mexico City 2005-2008, Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestral Commission “Words and Music Project” Oakland, CA, 2004; Creative Work Fund Media Arts Grant, San Francisco, CA 2003; California Arts Council Composers Fellowship 2000; American Composers Forum Continental Harmony Grant 1999; Residency for Composition at the Bannff Center for the Arts, Canada 1999 among many others

For more information, visit Guillermo’s website.

Alcario & Carmen Castellano, the Board of Directors of MACLA, and Quinteto Latino will be holding a special fundraising event in San Jose to celebrate the World Premiere of Voces del Desierto/Voices of the Desert.

If you would like to join us, please fill out the form on the left hand side of this page, and we will mail you a formal invitation shortly with the details.

Sunday, March 11, 2012
2-5 pm
Saratoga, CA

Images from Laredo, TX, April 2011

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Instruments

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Photo Shoot

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Rehearsal, December 29, 2011

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Images from Laredo, TX, April 2011

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By Daniel Alarcón

One aluminum can of juice, rust blooming at its edges. One clear plastic folder, of the sort used to protect documents. A pair of women’s jeans, size medium. A cream-colored women’s blouse, with the word “Baby Girl” stamped on the front. One truck tire. One empty plastic water bottle. One children’s backpack, with the desiccated skin of a tangerine inside. One orange soccer jersey, team unknown. A pair of men’s underwear. A single canvas walking shoe. A bra. A can of hairspray. One red wool knit cap, for the cold. A gray rain coat. A small denim backpack. Eight spinal vertebrae of an unidentified animal. A bottle of Pedialite. A piece of woven plastic rope, as for climbing, shorn at the ends.

These items were found along the US-Mexico border, on the outskirts of Laredo on an early morning walk in April of this year. Together, they constitute physical evidence of the daily human flow northward, into Texas, the Southwest and beyond. To every region and every state in the nation, in fact. It happens here. An extraordinary journey, marked by these ordinary consumer goods which now litter the scrub brush desert. Consider the heat—already overpowering by mid-morning—and the distance that these tossed-away items might have traveled before being abandoned here. Consider the vastness of the landscape, its disorienting immensity, and the circumstances which might have made the crossing desirable. Or unavoidable. Consider the possible outcomes for the men, women and children who attempted the passage. Consider the places they intended to go, the family members who were waiting anxiously to receive them.

The statistics are clear: we can assume that at least some of these items once belonged to migrants who did not survive.

Onstage, to my left, is Guillermo Galindo, an artist and composer from Mexico City, who has lived in the United States for two decades. He is also the man who collected these artifacts, who catalogued them, who re-imagined them. The sounds you’re now hearing are being created by instruments made from these scavenged items, instruments which Galindo and artist Corey Wolfs have designed. The objects are not decorative, but essential to the sound itself.

View the instruments made of objects found in Laredo

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As in this instrument, made from the canvass shoe.

Or this one, in which the vertebrae serve as the bridge for a five string harp.

The can of juice, for example, has been repurposed, as the resonating chamber for a stringed instrument that can be plucked or played with a bow:

And the large instrument is a kind of loom: the whooshing sound you will hear is made from the sewn-together pieces of fabric, as they move through the apparatus.

There’s no need to be esoteric about this, but according to Galindo, there’s an aura attached to each object, to each article of clothing, something spectral that recalls the person who used it, as well as the landscape and the circumstances in which it was discovered. That aura now belongs to the instrument, so that what we’re actually hearing is not music, or rather not just music—but a memory, an echo of a time and place and a human being who passed through, unseen.

A unique musical piece using all of these instruments is in the process of composition. The piece will be called “Voces del Desierto” and will be premiered by the wind quintet “Quinteto Latino” at MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latinoamericana) based in San José, California.

Daniel Alarcón is author of the story collection War by Candlelight, a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award, and Lost City Radio, named a Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, among others, and winner of the 2009 International Literature Prize given by the House of World Culture in Berlin. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning quarterly published in his native Lima, Peru, Contributing Editor to Granta, and was recently named one of The New Yorker’s 20 under Forty. His fiction, journalism and translations have appeared in A Public Space, El País, McSweeney’s, n+1, and Harper’s. Alarcón lives in Oakland, California, where he is a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Latin American Studies.

March 16 and 17, 2012
8pm

March 18, 2012
2pm

MACLA/ Moviemento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana
510 South First Street
San Jose, CA 95113

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“Voces del Desierto” is a multidisciplinary musical composition inspired by the journey of all those who dare to cross borders in search of a better life. This original and eclectic work merges instruments made from immigrants’ personal belongings found at the Mexico/US border with musical instruments of a traditional wind quintet.

Voces del Desierto is an original concept and composition by Guillermo Galindo specifically written for Quinteto Latino. The commissioning and production of this world premiere is made possible by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Composer Collaboration 2010 Initiative.